the journal of a vintage clothing aficionado for roughwear,selvedge denim and overalls fanatics....

Sunday, October 20, 2013

HOLLYWOOD'S "13 BLACK CATS" STUNT PILOTS

Today will be a short tribute to early Hollywood stunt pilots,shinning the light on a particular bunch called :"the 13 black cats".Featured today for the occasion,my own tribute jacket based on the Buzz Rickson's repro.....

The 13 Black Cats were a troupe of flamboyant stunt pilots who defied both superstition and the odds of survival during the 1920's and 1930's.

The Black Cats advertised their skills for the film industry with the slogan "Anything for a price."here's a sample of the "menu" of the13 Black Cats stunt fees:

Loop-the-loop with men standing on wing tips - $450

Delayed parachute jump with 1,000 feet free fall - $150

Double parachute jump with both men using same chute - $180

Plane to plane or plane to car transfer - $150

Flight tableau on upper wing with 1 man knocked off - $225

Plane blows up in midair as pilot chutes out - $1,500

One requirement for membership was that the member's name must contain 13 letters. If the letters in his name did not add up to 13, he was given names such as 'Fronty' Nichols, [William] 'Spider' Matlock, and [Ronald] 'Bon' MacDougall. All of these pilots and stuntmen often doubled as the first aerial cameramen in Hollywood.

Darn. Yeah, I had marked one of the patches to buy later on Ebay and by the time I came back it was gone. It's interesting because the first time I came across the patch was on Ebay and then I saw it on an RRL jacket that they called the Rixon Jacket. Wondering if they got the idea from you, because it didn't look like the knew anything about the 13 BC since they didn't mention anywhere in the description.

seen the jacket .i bet they had no idea at all about the origin of the patch ...bet they've done as usual, pull a cool image from the net and go with it ...well at least ,now they can pretend they knew ;-)